


forgive us now for wasting the dawn

by fardareismai



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: 5x14 fix-it, F/M, Fix-It, Season/Series 05, milah gets her reward, milah sees killian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-28 17:40:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6338869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fardareismai/pseuds/fardareismai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don't dream in the Underworld, not really, because you don't sleep, not really.</p><p>Milah's thoughts as she sees Killian again for the first time in three-hundred years, or "how to fix a situation that our local evil sorcerer decided to make even worse that it was already going to be."</p><p>Season 5 Episode 14 fix-it-fic or, as my husband would have it "fics-it"</p>
            </blockquote>





	forgive us now for wasting the dawn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WhoLockGal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhoLockGal/gifts).



You don’t dream in the Underworld.  Not really.  Because you don’t sleep.  Not really.

  


You do remember though.

  


Memory is a funny thing in the Underworld too, because your memories don’t change, not really, but you don’t have new experiences on which to balance those memories.  Nothing new ever happens to you to sweeten or burn those memories in your head and so they play on an infinite loop until they begin to twist themselves.

  


Even the sweetest memories become nightmares after a time, and she has had time.

  


She is afraid as she can hear the shuffle of their boots against the stone floor- uneven steps because he is injured, she diagnoses.  She is frightened to see his face, once so beloved, now in her memories transformed into the face of an angel or a demon- beautiful and terrible.  The smile that won her heart in an instant sharpened to a diamond edge that blinds her with radiance.  The eyes that were the precise colour of the sky at the horizon that called to her long before she knew what the sound was are like ice in her mind, burning her with their chill.

  


She is afraid he will be changed.

  


She is afraid he will be the same.

  


As he appears, shuffling as though broken, leaning on the girl with the knowledge in her eyes as though she were the only thing that could keep him standing, he is both.

  


He looks just the same as he did that day, so many many years ago, when he had described ports where the air tasted of spice and jewels adorned everything- his hair was overlong, his beard poorly trimmed, underfed, underslept, beautiful.

  


He looks like a stranger.  One sea-blue eye is swollen shut and his face is puffy with bruise and painted over with blood.  His hair lays lank over his forehead and he seems scarcely to notice anything but the process of placing one foot in front of the other to propel himself forward.  His breath comes in ragged pants that make her own skin crawl with empathetic pain.  The left hand that had reached for her so many times over the years they had been together is gone, replaced with the wicked silver glint of a hook.

  


He is no older though she knows, in that strange way that any of them know anything about the world to which they once belonged, that so much time has passed.  Her son has grown to a man.  Has been lover and father and hero.  She thinks Killian should have lines on his face and silver in his hair.  Those blue eyes should be bleached with age and yet they are not.  

  


He has lived and not changed, and she cannot determine if she is pleased or sorry.

  


They make it to the edge of the quay and the girl helps to lower him to sit on the cold stone and rest.  She is beautiful, his new love. Where Milah is dark, she is golden. Where Milah’s mouth tilts naturally up, hers tilts down. Milah’s strong jaw is mirrored by a softer one, and her narrow forehead by a wide one.

  


And yet, she carries him without struggle, steel strength beneath velvet skin. Milah had seen it there in the cave: this girl- this woman- had loved both of Milah’s men, as she had. And she had known what guilt keeps a mother in purgatory for three centuries. She had known, as Rumple could not with his possessive jealousy, that the business that truly weights a soul to hell is not love of a man, no matter how deep. She had known that a woman must be to herself first, and before even that, to her child, which is much more than herself.

  


The golden-haired woman, after checking that her injured charge is well, crosses to Milah and offers a hand covered in a thin leather glove.

  


“I didn't tell him you were here, he was scarcely conscious when I found him. I think he'll like the surprise though.”

  


Milah wonders what depths of compassion the woman must be plumbing to offer to reunite her love with his past love. She wonders if this Emma Swan is only doing so because she believes that Milah will cross away soon and Killian will be left to her alone, and she mentally chastizes herself for ascribing such pettiness to the girl she doesn't know.

  


She allows Emma to pull her over to where he's sitting, terrified and excited.

  


“Killian,” Emma says, softly as though not to scare him.

  


He lifts his head and his good eye finds Emma first, as though seeking out sanity on the midst of madness and Milah’s heart twists. Then that shining blue gaze finds her, and the painful rattle of his breath stops, and the progressively increasing rhythm of her own does the same. 

  


“Milah,” he whispers, and it's just the same as it ever was. She is young and beautiful and he loves her. She is his pirate queen and the horizon stretches before them, infinite with possibility.

  


Then she blinks and the time rushes back again. She is dead and has been for so long she nearly can't remember what it felt like to have a heart that pumps wildly against her breast.

  


Her memories are back though. No longer nightmares, he has returned their form to her, and for that she might be grateful for all eternity.

  


His eye darts between his two women and Milah looks up to find Emma watching her, a small smile tugging one corner of a mouth that smiles far too infrequently.

  


Killian will fix that, she thinks. He had taught her to smile even against the weight of guilt, after all.

  


“You saved me,” he says, and though Milah knows he is speaking to them both, Milah responds as though he had spoken only to her.

  


“Aye, Captain Killian Jones, and I shan't be doing it again. I've other things to occupy my time with now. I must move on, and so must you. Someone else will have to pull your fat from the fire from now on.”

  


The last she speaks, not to Killian, but to Emma, and the younger woman nods, understanding.

  


Milah reaches down her right hand to take Killian’s, touching him for the first time.

  


The dead have no heat, as the living do, and it is so unfamiliar to feel him cold against her that he might, again, be a stranger. 

  


He stands at her urging, his eye locked on hers as it rises above hers, wide and shocked.

  


She kisses him- a cold, dead thing, a goodbye she was not allowed the first time- and steps away before he can respond.

  


She turns to Emma and reaches out a hand which the other woman takes. Milah can feel the heat of her living flesh and beating heart even through the leather.

  


“Take care of him, won't you? He needs looking after or he tends reckless. You know how men are.”

  


“I will,” Emma answers, then her eyes find his. “I do.”

  


The vow makes Milah smile. He deserves that, what this living woman can give him and she, Milah, could not then and even more so can not now. He deserves love and marriage and family…

  


She suddenly remembers what Rumple said in the beginning: Emma’s son, and Balefire’s.

  


She turns to the woman, her new friend, on whose shoulder Killian is leaning again.

  
“Before I go, I want… May I… I want to meet my grandson.”


End file.
